


Inevitability

by Voyaelm



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Mind Reading, Spoilers, Trauma, and then she gets mad, happyish, lup is super sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voyaelm/pseuds/Voyaelm
Summary: It makes her… she isn’t even really sure of the emotions running through her; the viscerality of them being too much to dwell on without making her sick to her stomach. Sadness? Regret? Neither of those words are even close to being strong enough to describe how she feels and has been feeling.It’s just. Too much.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Inevitability

**Author's Note:**

> ooooooo boy, it's been almost 3 years since i've written a TAZ fic. i started relistening to balance, and rediscovered my love for it. so i have quite a few fics planned for the near future  
> -  
> Enjoy some Blupjeans angst as my debut

It wasn’t easy for her to come to terms with the sheer gravity of what they had done. Of what _she_ had done. 

Learning every few days that yet another city has collapsed thanks to the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. Generations and generations of families and livelihoods wiped off the world, as if they never existed in the first place. Homes and businesses reduced to nothing but ash and black glass. She sometimes calls about small meetings with the crew just to inform them about particularly devastating glassings.

It’s been a few weeks since she’s called a meeting, but that’s only because she got tired of it. The glassings haven’t stopped. 

And just today she caught word from some locals while she was on her daily walk that a nearby town went up in flames. At the time, she just walked on. She’s stopped asking the names of the cities and towns. There wasn’t a point. 

The damage had already been done. And there was nothing she could do.

Taako calls her out of her thoughtful daze for dinner; and she’s able to hold herself together enough to get through it, thank the gods. Everyone knew something was up; Lup could tell that right off the bat. She just sat and ate, leaving a half finished plate of food on the table without a word to the rest of the crew. It upset her, being so terse and unwilling to talk to her family. But she still can’t. Not now. 

So she does what she always does when she’s upset. She lays in bed, pulls the blankets over her head, and sobs.

They’re loud. For a minute, Lup considers throwing up a silence so she doesn’t have to hear her disgusting sounding cries, but decides against it. It’s what she deserves. She deserves to hear her own cries at what she had done to this world without permission, thousands upon thousands of people dying every time someone gets their hands on her relic.

It makes her… she isn’t even really sure of the emotions running through her; the viscerality of them being too much to dwell on without making her sick to her stomach. Sadness? Regret? Neither of those words are even close to being strong enough to describe how she feels and has been feeling.

It’s just. Too much.

She’s been crying for nearly ten minutes when she hears a faint knock on the door. She very strongly considers screaming at whoever it was to leave her the fuck alone, but she ops to stay quiet. The last thing she wants to do is say something she’ll end up regretting. 

The knock doesn’t continue, instead being replaced with a soft, comforting, and very familiar voice.

“Lup? Dear?”

Barry. Barry, of course it’s him. He must’ve noticed the tenseness in her posture at dinner and knew she was on the verge of a breakdown. Usually, this would make everything better. Go and open the door, jump into Barry’s arms while he lets her cry into his neck until everything is okay again. 

Sadly, nothing could fix this. Not even Barry.

It’s worth a shot, she supposes. It’s not like it could hurt.

So she invites him in with a soft, raspy from crying, voice. She hears the door open slowly, then shut. Even with the blankets tucked against her ears, she can still hear Barry’s footsteps as he moves to sit next to her on their shared bed. 

Lup notices that he doesn’t reach out for her, doesn’t try to lay a hand on her shoulder for comfort. 

Good. Lup’s not sure she could keep her cool if he touched her right now. 

He just sits there beside her, not saying a word and not making any sudden movements. He’s waiting for her to start the conversation, but she’s not too keen on it. 

Even so, it’s something she should probably do. She moves out from under the blankets and looks Barry in the eyes, something she just now realized she hadn’t done in weeks. He smiles sadly at her, titling his head and knitting his brows. “Hi there, hun.”

“Hey.” She sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She’s sure she looks pitiful. 

“You haven’t been yourself lately.” He says in a soft, concerned voice. Lup groans internally. At least it wasn’t an ‘are you okay?’ She probably would have decked him. 

“Gee, Barry. I wonder why.” She rolls her eyes and bites her lip. He knows why she’s upset. He _has_ to. 

“Well, yeah. That would be more than enough to make anyone act differently.” He scratches his head, with an awkward smile. “But, honestly? I’m still not sure why this is bothering you _this_ much.”

“Pardon?”

“I- I.” He sighs, taking a minute to think before speaking again. “We’ve done… so much worse to other worlds. We’ve left dozens of worlds to get swallowed by the Hunger. What we did with the relics is child’s play in comparison to what the Hunger has done, isn’t it? What’s done is done. No need to feel guilty over that.”

Lup tenses, digging her nails into her thighs from under the blanket. “What exactly are you trying to say?” 

“Your relic’s out in the world. There’s no changing that. It isn’t your responsibility anymore, Lup.” Barry says matter-of-factly, like his word is final on this. Like he knows everything about what she’s feeling. She can’t let that stand. She refuses. 

“What isn’t? _My_ relic?! How is it anyone’s fault but _mine_ for making it?” Barry tries to butt in, but Lup grits her teeth and continues. “I made something that has the power -- and has shown that power multiple times -- to completely destroy cities. To destroy hundreds and thousands of people in one go.” Tears start coming out of her eyes again; she can feel them drip down her cheek and begin to itch. “Of course it’s my fucking responsibility.”

Barry opens his mouth, and then closes it without saying a word. She doesn’t blame him; if she heard him lay out the exact thing that had been bothering him for nearly a year, it’d make her speechless too.

“Don’t even know why I thought this would work.” She laughs, exasperated. When Barry doesn’t reply right away, she looks back at him. He’s tapping his fingers against his legs and looking at her with tenderness. 

“It did work. Not without its fair share of damage, of course-” Lup chuckles to herself. It was definitely more than a ‘fair share’ of destruction. “And, Lup. _I_ also had the idea of splitting the light and making the relics in the first place. You’re not the only one to blame. We’re all equally at fault for what happens out there with the relics.”

Lup huffs out a laugh, glaring at Barry with cold eyes. ‘’Equally at fault huh? Say, _love of my life_ -” The emphasis makes Barry shiver, and that makes Lup smile, “-How many people have died because of _your_ relic? Hmmmm? Oh, not tens of thousands? Am I hearing that right?”

Barry drops his head, and nods dejectedly.

“Ha! That’s exactly what I fuckin’ thought.” Lup smirks. For a second, the thought of Barry being sad makes her… happy. Ugh. Her smile falls into a frown. He turns his gaze back up.

And he still looks at her like she’s radiant. Like she could do no wrong in his eyes. It makes her angry. Barry is so _smart_. He should know why she’s upset and agree with her. On a completely logical basis, he should be disgusted with her. She’s pretty much a mass murder.

That… doesn’t sit well with her. 

“You know what? I’ve decided I don’t wanna talk to you right now, Barry.” His eyes go wide. “So if you’d kindly _fuck right off_ that’d be great, thaaanks.” 

He doesn’t leave. In fact, he scootches closer to her, hand close to her knee. He isn’t touching her. She nearly growls at him.

“Do I need to repeat myself? Fuck. Off.”

“Lup, darling, this isn’t you.” Lup resists the overwhelming urge to deny him. She’s become this. She developed this sudden sadistic and aloof personality because of these fucking artifacts. She’s gotten worse than Taako. Of course she’s a bad person; what good person makes a weapon of mass destruction and sets it free into a world full of unsuspecting people?

“You’re a good woman. This was all just… an inevitability. None of us could have imagined the damage that would be done when we did this. It was- It was pretty much impossible to even predict.” She doesn’t look at him, she _can’t_. And she doesn’t know why. “Bad people don’t feel...remorse. They don’t feel guilty about the things they do wrong, Lup. You do. You clearly fucking do.” Barry reaches to wipe one of the residual tears off Lup’s cheek before quickly retreating, probably remembering that she didn’t want to be touched. “You aren’t a bad person, Lup.”

“Well, I sure fucking feel like one.” And there it was. A proper admittance to how she’d been feeling about this whole ordeal. She crosses her arms over her chest protectively, looking up at Barry with her ears lowered to gauge his reaction. 

Barry’s eyes somehow soften even more. “Gods, Lup. I can only imagine how hard this is on you. Knowing that you made something so dea-” He stops himself, deciding to open his arms for Lup to move into instead of continuing. 

Lup hesitates. She wants to. She really wants to. Being in Barry’s arms, having him tell her that everything will be okay and that she isn’t some type of monster, sounds like the most perfect thing in the world. But she still can’t kick that feeling that has been ingraining itself into her thoughts for the past ten months. That she doesn’t deserve this, after it all. Happiness and love is for good people. She’s terrible. She shouldn’t get to love or be loved. She shouldn’t get to have Barry.

That thought triggers something deep inside her, and she starts shaking. She looks down at her hands and is shocked to see small bolts of red electricity crackling out of them. Barry must also see them because he immediately reaches out without her permission and kisses her. She tries to push him, but he holds his ground. Once she calms down, he pulls away and rests his forehead on hers. He looks down at her palms again, prompting her to do the same. The lich lightning is gone, leaving only skin visible. 

He begins to let her go, but now that she’s gotten a taste of his touch, she wants more. She swoops in and locks their lips together again. Barry stumbles a bit, having to catch himself with his hands on the bed behind him, but still reciprocates. 

She can be selfish right now, she’s decided. Her emotions are so out of whack, and it’s been a few days since she’s kissed Barry like this, and she missed him so much. She still doesn’t feel worthy of this, but she pushes the thought as far back into her brain as she can. 

“It’s okay Lup. You deserve it.” Barry whispers against her lips when they pull back for air. He reaches up to cup her cheek after pushing some of her damp hair out of her face. “You deserve to be happy now.”

She smiles at him and connects their lips again. They kiss like that for a little while, until Lup realizes how exhausted she is and almost collapses into Barry. Luckily for her, he catches her pretty well. 

Lup feels a small flash in her brain. Her eyes narrow as she traces fingers over Barry’s where they wrap around his wand.

“Mind-reading asshole.” Lup mutters into Barry’s shirt, and he chuckles nervously.

“Sorry, babe. Sometimes you are really, uh, really cryptic and I just gotta know what’s going on in there.” He kisses the side of her head and she relaxes a bit more into his hold. 

“I forgive you.” And she did. Lup knew he didn’t use that particular spell unless he really needed to know something. So, very rarely. He was a good man; he’d never take advantage of her trust in him. She lays a hand in the middle of his chest. “Only if you forgive me for being an ass to you.”

Barry smiles into her hair. “Of course.”

Doing this, talking it out and having a chance to defer her anger with herself onto someone else, was helpful. Not a complete fix; she’s not sure if anything could fully fix her form of thinking. At the end of the day, she made the gauntlet. She’s personally responsible for each and every one of those deaths. The thought still terrifies her and shakes her to her core. 

“I just can’t-” Barry shushes her with a quiet voice and a hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t want her to think about it. She doesn’t want to think about it either.

So they continue to sit and hold each other in silence, occasionally taking a break for kissing on Lup’s end and soft, calming words on Barry’s.

**Author's Note:**

> barry is a very dense man, but he means well!  
> -  
> Thank you for reading! <3 Let me know if you liked it! I also take requests for TAZ fics/drabbles if you wanna see something specific


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